Going for Goodness

Many years ago we began integrating children with special needs into our programs. Along with these children came a fantastic group of therapists and psychologists to support the children, parents and teachers. A key area of focus was discovering the best method to help these wonderful children connect and interact with their peers. This discovery became the heart of our Going for Goodness program. We quickly realized the methods we were using for the children with special needs were extremely helpful for all of our students. The psychologists showed us that children learned best when we isolated a specific social skill and focused on it for a duration of time. We teachers realized, never do you learn more about a concept than when you try to teach it! We combined these two discoveries to create Going for Goodness. Each lesson teaches a specific social skill (or value) and the teaching is done by the children as they help their poor confused teachers figure out how to solve a social problem.

Going for Goodness is taught 2 different ways within our centres. It is taught spontaneously throughout the day in both the 3 year old and 4 year old programs. As teachers see different skills that need to be worked on, they will address them with the entire class. It is also taught using monthly virtue lessons. These lessons are reinforced each day throughout the month.